Previous Next

Ten things the world needs now: peace in the Gulf; flood relief in Bangladesh; sensible political co-operation in Northern Ireland; free strawberry milk shakes on the National Health; another abstract puzzle game on the Amiga; humaniterian aid for - hang on a minute, one of those doesn't sound quite right. Which could it be?

We've got Klax, we've got Tetris, we've got Gem'X, we've got Puzznic, we've got Plotting - is there simply room for one more abstract puzzle game? I guess that depends how good it is.

Most people would probably agree that the premier requirement for a good puzzle game is addictiveness. All the above games have it in buckets, but the bottom line is that it's missing from Logical, and that's really the end of the story. The game has a solid puzzle-game construction (the idea is to shunt little marbles around to fill up all the wheels you can see on the screen with marbles of the same colour), but Rainbow Arts say that they expect even an average player to get about twenty levels into it on their first go. With a level taking upwards of five minutes to play through on average (and five minutes of pretty slow and repetitive actions at that), we're not looking at a high frustration or compulsion level, with the result that you're likely to play it once, think "Oh well, that's quite nice", and dump it at the back of your software shelf, never to see the light of day again.

It's a shame, because Logical is very attractively done and has loads of potential for mindbending, but even with level codes for easy access to the 'hard' levels, you're pretty unlikely to ever want to play it twice. (By the time you get to a challenging level, you'll have been playing for so long you'll be heartily sick of it all.) Some pointless extra features (the ridiculous 'one-colour' levels in particular) don't help matters any, either. Even at £5 below the norm, this is just too second-division to be worth considering.

Graphically lovely and intriguing game, spoiled by fundamental design flaws and excessive easiness. The quality of the opposition doesn't help either. Another 'could-have-been'.